House of Commons photoWon her last election, in 2015, with 33% of the vote.
Petitions March 29th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, my second petition is from Gabriola Island.
Petitioners from Gabriola Island urge the transport minister to reject the applications for five bulk commercial anchorages off the sensitive shoreline of our coast. It is an island where I also live. They cite the potential from the project to have adverse impacts on sport fishing, spawning beds, and wetlands. The risk is extreme for our community with no benefit whatsoever. The bulk anchorages applications should be rejected.
Petitions March 29th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I rise to table two petitions today.
The first petition is from the good folks at ACORN, which is a community organization that gathered hundreds of signatures from people in Ontario. The petitioners note that low-income people in particular have difficulty accessing banking services, and are particularly susceptible to predatory lending from payday loan outlets. They say the payday loan industry is worth an estimated $2.5 billion annually, and that profit is coming out of the pockets of people who can least afford it.
Therefore, the petitioners call on the House of Commons to consider a number of things in its federally regulated approach to banking: to provide access to low-interest credit for emergencies, to lower fees on overdraft protections, and in particular, to offer alternatives to conventional banking, such as postal banking.
Indigenous Affairs March 28th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, with respect, I have heard that same speech for two and a half years. The member did not answer a single question that I asked.
Is the government going to establish a commemoration fund, as the inquiry asked for in its interim report on November 1? Is it going to provide additional funding to the Health Canada resolution support program? Is it going to establish a national police task force to reopen cold cases, as the families have asked again and again? Is it going to provide alternative administrative processes so the inquiry does not get caught up in all this Privy Council Office delay?
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission did that when Murray Sinclair insisted. This inquiry has not. We have to get specific. We are running out of time. I agree with all the member's sentiments. They are all good words, but there is no action in them.
I have asked some very specific questions, and I will keep asking them until I get an answer. We cannot keep saying “We will soon reply.” The government has been saying that since November.
Indigenous Affairs March 28th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the last time I stood to discuss the continuing barriers to the success of the murdered and missing indigenous women's inquiry, I did not get an answer from the government about how the Liberals were going to respond to the interim report of the national inquiry.
Two and a half years into the mandate, it is a very strong commitment by the government, which is certainly shared by New Democrats. It is our highest priority. This is a request that was identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in its calls to action. The momentum of over a decade had the families of murdered and missing indigenous women ask the federal government to take leadership and get to the bottom of why and how these women disappeared and what the gaps are in our justice system that failed to support them.
On November 1, the inquiry provided its interim report. It identified that seven out of the 10 barriers to its success were direct bureaucratic stumbling blocks put in place by the federal government, and possible to be removed by the federal government.
When I had the opportunity in question period on November 22, I asked the government if it was doing everything it could to remove those barriers. We were assured that, yes, the government was removing those barriers, but there is still no evidence that has been done and still no response to any of the very strong recommendations from the national inquiry in its November 1 interim report.
Therefore, once again, I ask the government how it is removing the barriers to the inquiry's success. Also, how quickly are we going to see a response from the government to the November 1 interim recommendations and requests from the inquiry?
An Act in Relation to Firearms March 28th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, New Democrats welcome the tabling of this legislation and the fact that we have a few more hours to talk about it in the House. It is important and we want to make sure that we understand it. We are both protecting people, and representing rural areas and respecting the concerns of our constituents. Therefore, I am willing to support the bill to send it to committee to make sure that it has some common-sense elements in it.
One of the elements that looks like an improvement is the removal of the five-year limit on background checks. Therefore, for anybody who had a history of mental health problems or especially a record of domestic violence, a personal record check would be able to go back through the whole life of that person.
Could the member talk more about that element and what she is hearing in her riding about whether that is hitting the right balance for Bill C-71?
Status of Women March 28th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have not read their own bill. Their budget implementation act betrays all women who believed that the so-called “gender budget” would make their lives more fair. In spite of all the airtime that the government has given to legislating equal pay for work of equal value, yesterday's budget bill does nothing. The Liberals promised pay equity 40 years ago, and again in 2016, and again last month.
Prime Minister, wake up. It is 2018. When will the Liberals legislate pay equity?
Petitions March 21st, 2018
Mr. Speaker, these petitioners from Nanaimo call on the government to legislate action on abandoned vessels.
Although the announcement by the Minister of Transport last week in Ladysmith was nice, it was only $64,000, which is clearly not enough.
The petitioners call on the government to designate the Coast Guard as the responsible agency to be the first to take action on abandoned vessels. They are calling for repair in legislation of vessel registration, and a pilot vessel turn-in program to deal with the tremendous backlog of abandoned vessels polluting our coastlines.
Status of Women March 21st, 2018
Mr. Speaker, none of this is for the women who really need it now.
The budget mentions women hundreds of times, but fails to deliver for them. The so-called feminist government's budget has little concrete help for women on the ground right now. Why is there no money to put pay equity in place? Why are there no EI reforms so that women can actually access parental leave? How can the Liberals think they are for women's equality when they still have not funded universal, affordable child care?
Bills of Exchange Act March 20th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to be standing in support of the long overdue action to have a National Indigenous Peoples Day made a statutory holiday. This is consistent with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's recommendations. I am very grateful to my colleague, the member of Parliament for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, for bringing this forward.
If I were the Prime Minister, I would have adopted a bill just like this in 2016, on June 21, or in 2017. It is aligned with what the government says its objectives are. If it truly believes that its relationship with indigenous people is of the highest order and the highest precedence, then surely it would create space in our country for people to come together and talk about the legacy of residential schools, the overrepresentation of children in the child welfare system, and the overrepresentation of indigenous people, women in particular, in our jails.
We have a lot of work to do as a country. For a government that says that it wants to do the right thing and is very willing to spend money on all kinds of things, if it were to put its money where its mouths is, the Liberals would vote yes to this very constructive and concrete proposal.
I am honoured to stand in support of Bill C-369, representing Nanaimo—Ladysmith, and, in my community, to stand with the leaders and communities of Snuneymuxw First Nation, Stz’uminus First Nation, and Snaw-Naw-As, or Nanoose First Nation. These are leaders who have taught me a lot. In our community, on June 21, the solstice is increasingly the space being taken to recognize the past wrongs in the relationship with indigenous peoples in our country and the positive future we can have if we do. As my colleague says, “we are stronger when we are together”.
There is great work to do. For the families of Colton Boushie and Tina Fontaine, I am embarrassed and saddened by the failure to find the killers of their children and to witness the racism that has been unleashed in our country as a result of those trials. It tells us more and more that we have work to do as a country. Voting yes to the member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River's bill would be the least we could do.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the House to vote yes for this constructive, positive, forward-looking motion, consistent with the government's promises on indigenous peoples and consistent with its promises to fully implement the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The Budget March 20th, 2018
Madam Speaker, I was discouraged in this budget to see an awful lot of window dressing: we are going to fund a corporate award for the best performers who hire the most women; we are going to establish a think tank; we are going to do two conferences; or we are going to do what we can to encourage and inspire more women to move into the STEM industries. What we were hearing at committee is that all of that fancy stuff, which honestly feels kind of like elite feminism to me, does not do anything for the women who need the help the most on the ground. We are hearing from women in university saying that they are in STEM but their student debt is impossible and they cannot get affordable child care.
As well, the government has failed in its infrastructure spending, which it keeps delaying, to put in equity hiring provisions. The government has not put in place the conditions for anybody who gets a contract for infrastructure to say that they must hire a certain number of apprenticeships, indigenous people, or women. That is where the government could use its spending power to make a difference, to get some of these people their first jobs and then they could carry on in construction and engineering.